The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has issued its open banking policy which outlines its objective for implementation in Saudi and the benefits that the financial sector stands to gain from it.
SAMA plans to go live with its open banking ecosystem by the first half of 2022.
The issuance of this policy builds on the efforts of SAMA in pursuing the strategic objectives of the Financial Sector Development Program, outlining its commitment to promoting innovation, and trust within the sector, re-enforcing competition and raising efficiency.
It is also aligned with the SAMA’s efforts to ensure the sector’s infrastructure readiness to enable the utilisation of the most prominent financial technologies, and ensure the application of leading supervisory practices for new and innovative technologies enabled financial services.
promoted by SAMA, Source: SAMA
SAMA’s open banking journey has three distinct phases; a design phase, an implementation phase, and the go-live.
During the design phase, SAMA’s efforts will be devoted to the design of the Open Banking ecosystem (technologies and processes) and to the definition of a governance involving market participants.
The second phase which is the implementation phase will cover the development of the defined frameworks, technology building blocks and rollout activities including testing with financial market participants, and enhancement of customer awareness.
The last one which is the go-live phase is where the open banking ecosystem will formally be launched in the Kingdom and adopt a staged approach to support customer awareness and guarantee a continuous improvement in developing the infrastructure.
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